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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25596742">fleece sequence</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq'>deniigiq</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Into the Multiverse [21]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Android Matt is basically a toddler, Artificial Intelligence, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Peni didn't even want to like him okay, Robots, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Teenage Rebellion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:49:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,513</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25596742</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Administrator, Matt Murdock—”<br/>“No,” Peni said. “No, that’s not how this works. You aren’t your own administrator, okay?? You’re the bot. The robot. Someone else is your administrator.”<br/>Bot Matt cocked his head the other way and took an age and a half to process this information.<br/>“Administrator, Matt Murdock,” he said.<br/>“No,” Peni groaned, holding her face. </p><p> </p><p>(The other Spiders happen upon a broken android of someone familiar to Peni. She reluctantly agrees to help fix him and realizes that maybe she's more capable than she thought.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Matt Murdock &amp; Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdock &amp; Peni Parker (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), Miles Morales &amp; Peter Parker &amp; Peni Parker &amp; Gwen Stacy &amp; Peter B. Parker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Into the Multiverse [21]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1348219</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>396</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. oil spills</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/13422159">anthropomorphism</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq">deniigiq</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>FINE<br/>Take it<br/>Take this AU of an AU. See if I care. JUST TAKE IT. </p><p>(I wrote an AU one <em>thousand</em> years ago about Android!Matt Murdock called <b>anthropomorphism</b> that turned into a whole series called <b>electric sheep</b> which was about his journey to becoming human. And it has been ages since I touched that material and precisely never since I touched Peni's POV, so here we fuckin' go guys. All in, all at once. You don't have to read that AU to get this, but it will definitely help.)</p><p>Note: this is Comics Peni, so she's not the sunshine child from Into the Spiderverse. Just lettin' y'all know. I can't find a tag for her tho so here we gooooo.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sp//der’s hanger was dark and quiet. The green haze from way back, where a few engineers carried on welding and calling at each other, reminded Peni of summer. Humidity and rain and wet, matted greenness. The hanger wasn’t warm, but between the soft music echoing out of her laptop and the haze in the distance and watching her purple and white feet kicking out slowly over the end of the metal scaffolding she was sat on helped her pretend that it was.</p><p>She could pretend that the sound of the welding was rain. She could pretend that the music was coming out of a corner of the classroom. If she closed her eyes, she could hear the sounds of desks being dragged around and shoes squeaking every so often on linoleum floors.</p><p>And she could pretend that she was there, too.</p><p>“Peni.”</p><p>Yeah, she’d felt them coming.</p><p>“We need you.”</p><p>Seemed like everyone always did.</p><p>She swung her legs up and pushed her hands down to let them land under her. She stood up and turned around to see Miles and Gwen standing there in shiny, wet suits.</p><p>They smelled of pancakes.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Peni,” Gwen said.</p><p>She wasn’t.</p><p>“What’s happened?” Peni asked.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Peni didn’t play multiverse games like the others did. She didn’t have time. Gwen came by every so often, when she was avoiding responsibilities like Peni wished she could.</p><p>Gwen sometimes sat backwards in Peni’s rolling chair in her room and spun around in circles while asking her seemingly random questions about tech and robots. But mostly, when Gwen came around, she wanted to talk about drums.</p><p>She didn’t want to talk about drums now. She wanted Peni to be Peni Parker. To be Ben Parker.</p><p>She wanted her to fix a broken bot.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Peni arrived with the others to a rooftop that was black and still except for the silhouettes of the blonde Peter Parker and Peter B., both crowded together and talking over each other. They were kneeling and busy and talking. Always talking, those two.</p><p>Peni didn’t like to look at them, just in case—</p><p>Just in case—</p><p>She just didn’t like to look at them.</p><p>“Come on, buddy, hang in there,” Blondie was saying when she approached.</p><p>His hands were buried in the guts of a bot. A small one. Smaller than Peni had seen in a long time. It was overheating. She could hear the fans working from here. It was juddering, too. Glitching hard on a syllable that it just kept repeating.</p><p>“Call—call—call—call—call—”</p><p>“Call WHO?” Peter B. snapped at it.</p><p>His voice boomed huge across the emptiness of the rooftop. Peni flinched back without meaning to, but Peter B. wasn’t talking to her.</p><p>Just the bot.</p><p>It would get him nowhere.</p><p>“Call—call—call,” the bot carried on stammering. It twitched violently under Blondie’s hands. Those fans—Blondie needed to move his hands. That thing was about to get <em>hot</em>.</p><p>“Peni,” Gwen whispered. “He’s dying. How do we save him?”</p><p>Save who? The bot?</p><p>Why would they save the bot? Yeah, it looked pretty fried. It smelled sweet as hell. That was coolant pooling around it like blood. But it wasn’t actual blood and the bot was, honestly, too far gone.</p><p>“Turn it off,” she said, turning back to the other two. “Just turn it off. It’s leaking too much, it’s just gonna overheat.”</p><p>“Peni,” Miles pleaded softly. “We can’t turn him off.”</p><p>Him.</p><p>Always him. Always her. Always them.</p><p>People never seemed to learn that no matter how badly you wanted it—no matter how badly you pretended—bots would never be people. Not Sp//der. Not V#nom. None of them.</p><p>They weren’t people. They were suits and wires and code and <em>armor</em>. That was all they were.</p><p>“Peni, please,” Gwen said. “He’s Daredevil.”</p><p>That was low.</p><p>Peni didn’t want to turn back, but her life was a series of not-wanting, so she did and her stomach sank with the solid, gray stone that had dropped into it.</p><p>It <em>was</em> Daredevil.</p><p>Not her Daredevil, but <em>a</em> Daredevil. And it was glitching <em>hard</em>.</p><p>“Call—ca—call—<em>call</em>—”</p><p>It didn’t sound like a bot. It sounded like a voice recording. Blondie pleaded with it to stay still. His hands were slippery with coolant. He was trying to find the leak—</p><p>It was leaking.</p><p>Coolant.</p><p>Into its chest.</p><p>That was bad. It was gonna spark.</p><p>She dragged Blondie away from the thing and pushed Peter B. after him, ignoring their protests and Blondie’s insistence that he wasn’t leaving the Daredevil’s side.</p><p>She told him to shut up.</p><p>She didn’t mean it to come out like that, but it did and she decided to be angry about him being stupid and putting his hand into a stew of electric currents and liquid instead of being guilty because they didn’t have time for guilt.</p><p>Or feelings.</p><p>Only spite. Rage. Whatever it took to <em>turn this thing off before it hurt someone.</em></p><p>She shoved the bot onto its side to drain the coolant. It was heavy as hell. Peter B. came up next to her and helped her and she appreciated that, but she didn’t have time to thank him. The bot’s fans were whirring so loudly that she could barely hear her own breathing.</p><p>She needed compressed air.</p><p>She needed towels.</p><p>She needed to get all this liquid out of the thing’s—</p><p>What were those?</p><p>Her fingers scraped against them on the way back out of the bot’s chest cavity. They were strange structures. Silver and gleaming with coolant. They looked like tin-foil crafts but done by a professional. Like lungs, almost, but impossibly delicate and fragile.</p><p>What—why were they—</p><p>A hand closed tight around her wrist and she almost screamed. She looked up into the face of the bot instead.</p><p>It had skin.</p><p>It had lips.</p><p>It had freckles and variegation on its neck.</p><p>What—what was it?</p><p>“C-Call—” it wheezed, then glitched hard. “C-<em>call</em>—”</p><p>“What are you?” Peni asked it.</p><p>“C-call Sp—Spider—”</p><p>Spider?</p><p>Spiderman?</p><p>“Spiderman is here,” she said. “What do you need from him?”</p><p>The bot’s fans kicked up another level and it made a strange sound. A horrible sound. Like a wheeze and a whimper all in one.</p><p>That wasn’t supposed to happen. This was a bot.</p><p>“Help,” the bot said softly. “Call—Spider—Spider—help. Help.”</p><p>Its lips shuddered, and its body shook hard. Then its head dropped back and it turned off slowly.</p><p>Peni’s heart exploded.</p><p>She couldn’t understand why the sound in her ears had turned to rushing. Why her hands had started shaking. Why time had gone still and then crashed forward at six times the speed it was supposed to. But in a second, she found herself screaming for the others to get her towels. Get her coolant. Get her  tools.</p><p>She barely felt her own lips moving. She didn’t hear the questions people were asking her.</p><p>There was coolant on her hands. It was slippery like blood.</p><p>The bot’s lips were too real. Painted and dyed to look pink. To look red. To look <em>exactly</em> like Daredevil’s, down to the freckle on the bottom one that looked like a dark little speck. A smudge.</p><p>It wasn’t Daredevil.</p><p>It wasn’t dying.</p><p>The liquid on Peni’s hands was coolant.</p><p>It was <em>coolant</em>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She shoved the bot back over as hard as she could while the others left to get compressed air and towels. Its back was slippery. The red vest that it was wearing was completely soaked through with blue coolant. Its fans were running at maximum capacity, but they were getting clogged by the liquid and they were impeded by all this armor.</p><p>Peni started tracing seams.</p><p>Seams, seams, seams, until her fingers hooked into Velcro. She pulled. It was stuck.</p><p>She pulled at the bot’s shoulder to lift it again and tore at the Velcro until it came loose and she could work the vest off awkwardly.</p><p>It was heavy like the bot. Maybe bullet proof?</p><p>It didn’t matter. She shucked it aside and started to scrunch up the bot’s thin, long-sleeved shirt underneath so that she could work it over its shoulders and head. That would help the fans and the vents do their jobs.</p><p>She shook it when it was bare to get the coolant out of whatever vents were soaked in it and she heard a few more fans start whirring.</p><p>It wasn’t enough. The bot’s synthetic skin was warm to the touch. It was overheating, even in the cold night air.</p><p>It needed somewhere colder.</p><p>She looked around.</p><p>There was no way she could carry it off the roof. The others had gone. They were quick, they’d be back soon, but she couldn’t leave without telling them where she’d gone. This thing was still full of coolant. God knew if it had wires loose behind those strange lungs.</p><p>Why did it have lungs?</p><p>Was it a—</p><p>The whirring increased.</p><p>Her heart leapt and she spun back.</p><p>“No,” she said. “Don’t—don’t. <em>No</em>.”</p><p>Don’t turn back on. Don’t turn back on.</p><p>The bot dragged its head against the grainy roof.</p><p>Peni yanked it to the side and crammed her hand into its chest cavity, searching for a manual switch.</p><p>“Who are you?”</p><p>She froze.</p><p>The bot didn’t move.</p><p>“Did you just talk?” she asked it.</p><p>“Who are you?” the bot asked with the same intonation.</p><p>Lips brushed against the roof.</p><p>Head limp.</p><p>Arm twisted back.</p><p>How had it turned back on?</p><p>“I’m here to help you,” Peni said. “You’re going to be safe.”</p><p>The bot tilted its head enough to lift the edge of its helmet. The helmet awkwardly came loose. The compulsion to tap it back down was nearly overwhelming.</p><p>“My name is Matt,” the bot said to the ground. “What’s—what’s your-yours?”</p><p>What were these tears for?</p><p>“Peni,” she said. “My name’s Peni.”</p><p>It was going to die.</p><p>It was just a bot.</p><p>And it was going to die.</p><p>“My name’s Peni,” she hiccuped. “And you’re gonna be okay, Matt. I’m right here with you, okay?”</p><p>The bot’s head leaned a little more and the helmet had had enough. It fell off. It wasn’t secured with a chin strap. It just rolled off.</p><p>And the bot’s eyes were blue. Pearlescent. Like a mother of pearl button sewn onto a sleeve.</p><p>It blinked slowly. Its fans worked hard around its neck.</p><p>Its lips were shaped just like—</p><p>Just like—</p><p>“Stay awake, okay?” Peni said before she could stop herself. “I need you to stay awake.”</p><p>It didn’t make sense.</p><p>She needed it to go back to sleep.</p><p>Why was she telling it to stay awake?</p><p>“My name’s Matt,” the bot said softly.</p><p>“I know,” she told it.</p><p>“Sensory input…is greater…than pro-processing cap-cap-cap—”</p><p>It was taking in sensory input.</p><p>Its eyes were pearlescent.</p><p>It was dripping with coolant and getting hotter by the second.</p><p>“Hey,” she said softly. “Hey, you’re okay. Why don’t we—” she swallowed. “Go to sleep, Matt,” she said.</p><p>“Spiderwoman,” the bot sighed. “Call. Spiderwoman.”</p><p>“I will,” Peni promised. “You go to sleep now.”</p><p>“Confirm,” the bot said. “Goodnight. Peni.”</p><p>Goodnight.</p><p>Peni.</p><p>The bot shuddered again. And then it went still. And Peni sobbed.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It was just a bot. But it was so, so real.</p><p>Peni traced its cheek as she waited for the others.</p><p>Its body was cooling down again. Exposing the vents had helped. Even if the skin on the bot’s back was not nice to look at—it seemed grafted together—mottled, like someone had found two different pieces of plastic that were ‘ehn, close enough’ and had melted them together.</p><p>The bot had little freckles over some parts of it. And the lack of mask revealed thick, auburn hair and sloping eyebrows.</p><p>Peni had never seen Daredevil’s face, but she’d seen his lips and double chin.</p><p>This bot’s were slimmer. Its jaw wasn’t so square. It looked…younger.</p><p>That made Peni’s heart squeeze. She couldn’t stop herself from petting its hair.</p><p>Peter B. arrived back first with an armful of cans. He stopped, casting a long shadow over Peni with the bot strewn over her lap.</p><p>“We’re too late,” he said.</p><p>Peni didn’t look up.</p><p>They weren’t too late.</p><p>She would fix him.</p><p>She <em>would</em>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The cans of compressed air and Peter B.’s superstrength helped her get the worst of the remaining coolant out of bot-Matt’s chest.</p><p>It was a mess.</p><p>Peter B.’s phonelight brought that into focus.</p><p>He crouched down with it while she chased coolant out of the wiring with the pointed nozzle of the can.</p><p>“Peni,” Peter B. said. “Honey, were you crying?”</p><p>She didn’t want to talk about it.</p><p>She just wanted to fix this bot.</p><p>“He said to call Spiderwoman,” she said more hoarsely than intended.</p><p>“Oh,” Peter B. said. “He’s working with a Gwen.”</p><p>“She’s not here,” Peni said. “I don’t know how to call her. But he can’t wait for her.”</p><p>Peter B. took a slow breath.</p><p>“We’ll put the others on it,” he said.</p><p>“He’s damaged,” Peni sniffed. She wiped at her nose with the non-slippery part of her arm. “There’s a—a mark across his circuits. Here, you can see where whoever attacked him cut his coolant line.”</p><p>Peter B. frowned.</p><p>There was a roundish shape above Peni’s fingers. It looked like a stone.</p><p>“What—”</p><p>She didn’t know.</p><p>She just needed to get all of this dry.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The others arrived shortly after with offerings of towels and tools and cellphone lights. She took all of these and rolled Bot-Matt over so that she could better see what she was doing.</p><p>It was like performing surgery except she was no surgeon. Hell, she was barely a technician. All she could do was look and squint and think that maybe it was this, or maybe it was that. What she knew for sure was that bot-Matt needed coolant. He wasn’t safe to turn back on until then.</p><p>“He looks so real,” Blondie said. He sounded like he was going to wretch.</p><p>And he was right, on both counts.</p><p>It was eerie how human bot-Matt was sculpted to be.</p><p>Had—had his Spiderwoman done this? Had she made him?</p><p>Gwen shivered and her shoulders jostled Peni’s.</p><p>“We can’t let her take him if she did,” she murmured.</p><p>That…was unclear.</p><p>If the Spiderwoman of this verse had made this Daredevil then she was a brilliant mechanic. She would know how to fix him. She would know why all these coolant lines were so twisted up and fragile and what those lung-things were supposed to be.</p><p>“We need to find her,” she said as she worked.</p><p>Gwen shivered again and nodded.</p><p>Peni almost told her that they didn’t have a choice when she found it.</p><p>A switch.</p><p>It was under a panel that she’d been carefully taking the screws out of.</p><p>A manual power switch. Thank god.</p><p>Okay, that was a huge relief.</p><p>She made a note of it and reattached the panel and sat back on her heels. The others followed her.</p><p>“Can you fix him?” Miles asked.</p><p>The faith these people had in her was suffocating.</p><p>“Maybe. I don’t know,” she said. “But I can’t turn him back on to find out here. It’s not cold enough. He’ll overheat immediately.”</p><p>The others looked at each other and then back to her.</p><p>“What does that mean?” Blondie asked.</p><p>Well.</p><p>“You’re not gonna like it,” she said. “But I have an idea.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There was a walk-in freezer at the hanger at home. It was huge. It was used to store all kinds of bits and bobs and anyone who worked in there wore big, puffy jackets.</p><p>It was perfect.</p><p>But it meant that they maybe, kind of, sort of had to kidnap bot-Matt from his universe.</p><p>Peni felt a little bad about that, but there was a simmering seed of anger in her chest.</p><p>Spiderwoman had left her robot to break down on a roof. By itself. With no back up. No tracker. No emergency protocols. No automatic signaling to a phone or a watch or a computer to let someone know that it had gone down.</p><p>It was a bot.</p><p>Yes.</p><p>They were all just bots.</p><p>But it had a name. And it had a face. And by God, if someone was going to give their bot an identity, then it was nothing short of abandonment if they left it to break down on its own.</p><p>Bot-Matt had been abandoned.</p><p>He would rust out up on that building by himself. Left there like a corpse.</p><p>Left there like carrion.</p><p>The body of a dead soldier.</p><p>He was a bot.</p><p>But he was Daredevil. And the only person who had ever spoken to Peni like she wasn’t some semi-monster of fate was Daredevil.</p><p>So she would do him this honor. For his namesake if not him.</p><p>She would fix him.</p><p>By God, she would fix him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They snuck bot-Matt into the freezer and shivered inside of it in their thin suits for as long as it took for Miles to announce that he could no longer feel his fingers, and then they tried turning bot-Matt on again.</p><p>Peni slipped her fingers into the swinging panel of his chest cavity and found the switch she’d left uncovered. She pulled her hand back out and waited.</p><p>Bot-Matt’s head hung limply down towards his knees. He sat propped up like a broken puppet with his legs splayed out in front of him. His skin didn’t change color with the cold.</p><p>It took a moment for him to start whirring. Then after a good thirty seconds of that, his hands flexed and he slowly, slowly lifted his head back.</p><p>Those pearlescent eyes shone nearly white from the overhead lights.</p><p>“Initiating start-up,” he said with no inflection.</p><p>“Amazing,” Peter B. whispered.</p><p>“Entering start-up,” Bot-Matt said. “Administrator, please enter passcode.”</p><p>Peni blinked.</p><p>“Administrator?” she asked.</p><p>“Administrator, please enter passcode,” Bot-Matt said.</p><p>“Administrator?” Peni asked the others. “Do you think it’s Spiderwoman?”</p><p>They all turned to Gwen.</p><p>“Don’t look at me,” Gwen said. “My carrot-top’s a fully-<em>human</em> mass-murdering fuckhead.”</p><p>They turned back to the bot.</p><p>“Administrator, Spiderwoman,” Peni said. “Passcode, uh. 0810.”</p><p>Bot-Matt’s eyes blinked slowly.</p><p>“Passcode incorrect,” he said. “Administrator, please enter passcode.”</p><p>Pft. Obviously.</p><p>“Gwen, you do it,” Miles said, nudging Gwen forward.</p><p>Gwen grimaced, but puffed herself up and cleared her throat.</p><p>“Uh. Adminstrator, Spiderwoman,” she said. “Passcode, uh? V-voice recognition?”</p><p>There was another long pause while they all made clawing gestures at Gwen and she made them back.</p><p>“Voice not catalogued,” Bot-Matt suddenly said. “Please resubmit sample.”</p><p>They all stared.</p><p>“No, shut up. I got this,” Blondie said. “Administrator, Foggy Nelson. Passcode 4114.”</p><p>Bot-Matt whirred. They all redirect their attention to Blondie. He shrugged.</p><p>“Everyone knows their friends’ phone passwords, no?” he said.</p><p>No, man.</p><p>That’s weird, man.</p><p>Stop being a creep, man.</p><p>He scoffed and waved them off.</p><p>“Administrator, Foggy Nelson,” Bot-Matt said. “Passcode incorrect. Please enter passcode.”</p><p>Okay, this was hopeless. They didn’t have time to sit in a walk-in freezer for six hours trying to break into this guy’s coding.</p><p>“Matt,” Peni said. “It’s Peni. We talked. I want to—”</p><p>“Administrator, Peni,” Bot Matt said. “Please enter passcode.”</p><p>Please—what?</p><p>“You’re an admin?” Miles asked her in surprise.</p><p>Woah.</p><p>“I, uh. No. I mean. He took my name before I—”</p><p>“Voice sample accepted,” Bot Matt said. “Administrator Peni, please complete start-up sequence.”</p><p>Peni’s jaw threatened to drop.</p><p>“You gave <em>me</em> admin status?” she asked.</p><p>Bot Matt whirred loudly.</p><p>He didn’t respond.</p><p>Amazing.</p><p>“Peni,” Gwen said. “I think you just got an android.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bot Matt’s coding was a—and Peni said this completely and totally with awe—and absolute <em>shitshow</em>.</p><p>A ‘clusterfuck’ would be the better word for it, but she pretended that she hadn’t heard that one thrown around by the engineers.</p><p>Bot Matt kept shorting out, too. Whatever it was that had taken out his coolant lines had done some serious damage to his, well. Everything. To his everything.</p><p>It would be ages to get him into any kind of shape to be self-sufficient again.</p><p>Peter B. said that they didn’t have time to babysit a Daredevil robot. Who knew what he was programed to do. What they had to do was to find his Spiderwoman and get her to take responsibility for him and in the meantime, they had to figure out where to store him.</p><p>Peni looked at him.</p><p>He’d gone limp again after the latest short-circuit. His eyes had closed this time, so he looked like he’d fallen asleep.</p><p>“I can take him,” Blondie said. “I’ll put him in the shed in a tank or something so he can’t go robocop on us.”</p><p>“I was thinking double-sleeping bags, but that’s probably smarter,” Peter B. said.</p><p>“I don’t have space in my dorm,” Miles said.</p><p>“I got a broom closet. I’m sure Dad’ll be cool with it. I’ll tell him he’s a Halloween project,” Gwen said.</p><p>Peni couldn’t look away from bot Matt’s sleeping face.</p><p>“I’ll hold onto him,” she said.</p><p>Everyone looked to her in surprise.</p><p>“You don’t have to, Peni, you’ve done plenty,” Peter B. said. “God knows, he’d still be out there for the birds if you hadn’t shown up.”</p><p>…right. Still.</p><p>“I have the facilities here,” she said with a shrug. “No one comes into my room. I’ll just put him against the wall. When he gets hot, I’ll tie him to a skateboard and put him back in here for a few hours. He wouldn’t hurt anyone and maybe, if I can at least fix his vents, I can get him running long enough to figure out more about his Spiderwoman.”</p><p>The others chewed on this for a while.</p><p>They ultimately agreed.</p><p>And Peni then found herself harboring a wanted android in her bedroom. For the first time, and possibly the last time, ever.</p><p>Huh.</p><p>Was this what teenage rebellion felt like?</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. now that's a bop</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bot Matt sat silent in her bedroom, wedged in between the bed and the closet like a huge, broken doll, for a good two days before Peni woke up to the sound of a really loud fan.</p><p>She blinked blearily into the dark for a moment before she realized that two lights were staring back at her.</p><p>She might have screamed a little.</p><p>Might have fallen out of bed.</p><p>Might have tried to attack Mr. Android-Doll.</p><p>But he stayed completely still, even post-bat attack.</p><p>It took a little while of Peni turning the lights on and off and waving the bat in front of his face for her to realize that those lights were on behind the pearly exterior of bot-Matt’s eyes, but no one was home.</p><p>“You turned on again,” she hummed at him.</p><p>He didn’t move.</p><p>“How did you turn on again?” she asked.</p><p>She got nothing. She sighed.</p><p>“Okay, well. It’s bedtime,” she said. “I have school in the morning. So it’s night-night for bots.”</p><p>She opened her desk drawer to find the multi-tool she kept in there then turned back to Bot Matt only to find him not there.</p><p>She blinked.</p><p>The springs of her bed made a sound and she turned as slowly as she could and just.</p><p>Stared.</p><p>Bot Matt hunkered down against the wall of her bed.</p><p>With his boots.</p><p>On the bed.</p><p>WITH HIS BOOTS.</p><p>ON THE BED.</p><p>Oh, <em>hell no</em>.</p><p>“Bad bot,” she snapped. “Off.”</p><p>Bot Matt stared past her. She pointed more furiously. He blinked once and whirred.</p><p>“No,” she said. “Huh-uh. I see you playing innocent. I know you’re functioning. If you shut down, I can’t lift you. So you don’t get to be on the bed.”</p><p>Bot Matt continued to stare past her.</p><p>She felt her face twitch.</p><p>“Are you blind?” she snapped. “OFF.”</p><p>Nothing.</p><p>“OFF.”</p><p>Nothing.</p><p>She grunted and grabbed her phone.</p><p>She couldn’t get messages through to Miles or Gwen or Peter B. but Blondie’s phone was attached to the multiverse, and she <em>knew</em> he’d be awake. She texted him to come take Mr. Robo-Daredevil off her bed.</p><p>He sent a load of question marks back in return.</p><p>She repeated her request. He said that she should just tell him to move. She said that she had and he was still—wait. Where’d he go?—<em>NO</em>.</p><p>“Get out of there,” she snapped, grabbing Bot Matt’s waist and pulling him away from her closet. “You don’t fit. <em>No</em>. You don’t—oh my <em>god</em>.”</p><p>Okay, so maybe he did fit all tucked up like that on the set of drawers in there, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that he was supposed to sit all limp and quiet in his designated corner until she turned him on.</p><p>That was the point.</p><p>He wasn’t allowed to just…turn…on?</p><p>How had he turned on?</p><p>She texted Blondie furiously. He had no idea how that might happen but then helpfully said, ‘Peni, you know DD is actually blind right?’ which led to a moment of epiphany.</p><p>She locked eye on Owl-dude, all curled up in her closet, heating all her clothes methodically with his whirring.</p><p>“You’re actually blind,” she said.</p><p>She got nothin’.</p><p>“How did you turn yourself back on?” she demanded.</p><p>Bot Matt cocked his head.</p><p>“Administrator, Matt Murdock. Passcode accepted,”  he said.</p><p>“I’m sorry, <em>what</em>?”</p><p>“Administrator, Matt Murdock—”</p><p>“No,” Peni said. “No, that’s not how this works. You aren’t your own administrator, okay?? You’re the bot. The robot. Someone <em>else</em> is your administrator. Spiderwoman is your administrator.”</p><p>Bot Matt cocked his head the other way and took an age and a half to process this information.</p><p>“Administrator, Matt Murdock,” he said.</p><p>“No,” Peni groaned, holding her face. “No, that’s—<em>you’re</em> Matt Murdock.”</p><p>The bot’s expression went wide and it touched its chest.</p><p>“Yes, you,” Peni told it, then abruptly realized that she was not living a dream, this was literally, actually, happening and she was having a full-on, drawn out conversation about identity with an android.</p><p>What the hell?</p><p>When—what—</p><p>How—</p><p>“Oh my god,” she whispered. “You’re an android. You’re like a real android.”</p><p>Bot Matt whirred.</p><p>“Do you…dream?” she asked him.</p><p>He whirred. She huffed.</p><p>“Of course not,” she said. “Why would you—”</p><p>“Of electric sheep?”</p><p>She shivered and peeked slowly back around.</p><p>“You…understood that reference,” she said.</p><p>“My name is Matt Murdock,” Bot Matt said. He unfolded himself from the closet and slipped out, careful and fluid as could be.</p><p>“My name’s Peni,” Peni whispered.</p><p>“Sensory input is greater than processing capacity. Temperature levels are dangerously high.”</p><p>It was like he was asking for help.</p><p>“Do you? Want to go? Back into the freezer?” she asked him.</p><p>Bot Matt whirred.</p><p>“Affirmative,” he said.</p><p>Well, alright then.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bot Matt was <em>fascinating</em>. He was much happier in the freezer. You know, if androids could be happy.</p><p>He was staring straight ahead at nothing, scratching fingers in the frost at the bottom of the place while Peni watched in him in the biggest, fluffiest coat that she owned.</p><p>“You’re so human,” she said.</p><p>“Sensory input is greater than processing capacity.”</p><p>“How are you so human?”</p><p>“Sensory input is greater than processing capacity.”</p><p>“What happened to you?”</p><p>“Temperature levels are moderately high.”</p><p>“Who made you?” Peni asked with her chin in her hand, just watching.</p><p>Matt turned her way with his empty eyes.</p><p>“Stick,” he said. “Administrator. Handler. Manual correction is applied until compliance is achieved.”</p><p>What was that?</p><p>“Manual correction is applied until compliance is achieved.”</p><p>That sounded pretty bad.</p><p>“Affirmative.”</p><p>Amazing.</p><p>“You understand emotions,” she said.</p><p>“Affirmative.”</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“My name is Matt Murdock,” Matt said.</p><p>Truly incredible.</p><p>Peni wondered what he could do when he wasn’t combatting temperature levels and this sensory input thing.</p><p>She wondered—</p><p>No.</p><p>She stopped herself. She wasn’t a mechanic. She wasn’t a technician. She was just the body. The genetics. She just did what she was told. That was her job. She’d never built a bot. Her repairs to Sp//der had never been the same as Ben’s or May’s.</p><p>“I wish I could fix you,” she told Matt. “But I don’t know how.”</p><p>Matt turned back her way and scratched lightly at the bottom of the freezer.</p><p>“Your name is Peni,” he said.</p><p>It would never not be mind-blowing that he retained that kind of information even as smashed up as he was.</p><p>“My name is Peni,” she sighed.</p><p>“My name is Matt Murdock.”</p><p>“My name is Peni Park—”</p><p>Parker.</p><p>Dad would have done it. Ben did it all the time. Why couldn’t she? What was stopping her? She wasn’t any better or worse then them. They just hadn’t given her a chance.</p><p>She was allowed to take a leap.</p><p>Right?</p><p>Matt smiled at her. He could <em>smile</em>.</p><p>“I’m Peni Parker,” she told him.</p><p>He kept smiling.</p><p>“Hello, Peni Parker,” he said. “I’m Matt Murdock. Sensory input is greater than processing capacity. Temperature levels are becoming dangerously high.”</p><p>“Well, why don’t we try to do something about that, huh?” she asked.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It took two days, four different textbooks, some stolen tubing, some stolen coolant, and about three different lies to Ben, but she’d done it.</p><p>She’d <em>done</em> it.</p><p>“Temperature levels, give reading,” she said.</p><p>“Temperature levels are moderate,” Matt told her. “Sensory input—”</p><p>Yeah, yeah. Sensory input. Okay, whatever.</p><p>The point was that the temp. The temp!! It had gone down. It had been stable. For an hour. A whole hour.</p><p>The last two tries had only lasted 10 and 18 minutes. And yet now Matt was just chilling. Chattering on about just the sensory input thing. No temperature notes.</p><p>Unbelievable.</p><p>Peni stared at her hands.</p><p>“Maybe I’m not so hopeless,” she said. There was a shuffle. She looked up and froze.</p><p>“NO. OFF THE BED. BAD BOT.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Okay, okay, okay.</p><p>Temperature handled. Loose wires repaired. Seven additional fans installed. A whole lot of screaming at code, and holy shit. She was doing this.</p><p>“Are you comfortable?” she asked Matt.</p><p>He made sad android sounds at her. She groaned.</p><p>“They’re <em>boots</em>, Matthew,” she said. “I didn’t eat them. They’re right here next to me.”</p><p>Matt made quieter sad android sounds. She rolled her eyes.</p><p>“Whoever puts up with you is a saint,” she said.</p><p>“Sensory input—”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Tell me about the temps.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She was maybe a little attached. She hadn’t meant to become that way. But there was something about coming home from school and sneaking past Ben into her room to find Matt there, doing something silly like cuddling her soft backpack, or just hanging out in screensaver mode, waiting for her to come home and throw herself into her chair.</p><p>It was like having a pet. Or a project. Or maybe a friend.</p><p>“Did you miss me?” she teased that time as she started up her desktop.</p><p>“Affirmative.”</p><p>She froze.</p><p>“You missed me?” she asked.</p><p>Her throat hurt.</p><p>Matt whirred at her from the bed where he was cuddling her school bag.</p><p>“Affirmative,” Matt said.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“We found her,” Blondie said.</p><p>Peni was supposed to be elated. Relieved. She was supposed to cheer and fist pump. But instead all she felt instead was empty.</p><p>“Oh,” she said, “That’s great.”</p><p>Blondie’s eyebrows bent low.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Peni,” he said. “I know you guys got close.”</p><p>Was she that obvious?</p><p>Blondie looked away to Matt.</p><p>“He’s actually got a whole life,” he said. “He’s not the bot we thought he was.”</p><p>Peni believed it.</p><p>“He likes music,” she said after a minute.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Peni,” Blondie said.</p><p>“He likes the vibrations,” she said. “He likes to put his hand on my speakers. It shorts out his sensory input levels, but he likes it if its quieter.”</p><p>“Why don’t you bring him home?”</p><p>“He doesn’t like Sp//der,” Peni said with a bubble of laughter in her chest. “He gives it threat levels: red.”</p><p>Blondie sighed.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She didn’t <em>want</em> to give Matt back to his Spiderwoman. That lady didn’t deserve him. Matt was amazing. He was an engineering miracle. And Peni had done so much work to him. He didn’t whirr half as loud anymore. His temps hadn’t crossed into the danger zone for more than a week. He was like a giant cat. He ran off solar energy and followed the sun around her bedroom.</p><p>He loved music.</p><p>He <em>loved </em>it.</p><p>He listened to anything Peni played and sometimes reached out to touch her ankle or her knee or her shoulder in a tiny little plea to play a song again.</p><p>He understood emotions.</p><p>He understood Peni.</p><p>Better than Ben did. Better than anyone had. In years.</p><p>“I’d keep you safe,” she said. “Just like I keep the city safe. I’d keep you safe.”</p><p>Matt tilted his head slightly and reached up to catch her hand.</p><p>“Sensory input is greater than processing capacity,” he said.</p><p>Tears were always hotter when they were in your own face.</p><p>“Sorry, I’ll stop touching you,” she said.</p><p>“You are Peni Parker.”</p><p>“I am.” Her voice cracked. “And you’re Matt Murdock. And you’ve gotta go home, huh?”</p><p>Matt processed this. Then petted lightly at her schoolbag.</p><p>“Two more hours of studying, then music,” he said.</p><p>Right. Studying. He was always telling her to study.</p><p>“You’re a good friend, Matt,” she said.</p><p>“You are Peni Parker.”</p><p>“I’m trying to be,” she said.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Matt belonged to Spiderwoman in his verse, that fact would never change. So Peni made sure all his parts were okay and did a few diagnostic tests on him to make sure he was fully functioning before he went home.</p><p>He’d need all the help he could get. Spiders were rough on their tech.</p><p>“My friend is a Daredevil, too,” she told him while holding him down so that he’d let her put wires into the back of his head.</p><p>He hated the wires. He was always pulling at them, but he settled down once they were in and he was vibing with the desktop.</p><p>“He’s a lot like you,” she said.</p><p>“I am Matt Murdock,” Matt told her.</p><p>“And Daredevil,” Peni said. “Your Spidey gave you a cool name.”</p><p>“I am Matt Murdock.”</p><p>“Not that one. That’s less cool.”</p><p>Matt went quiet. Peni glanced over and snatched the pen out of his hand.</p><p>“No eating,” she scolded him.</p><p>He looked guilty. She kept an eye on him when she went back to her computer.</p><p>“Gwen said that your Spiderwoman is like my aunt but not quite,” she said. “You’ve got a Spider May. That’s really lucky for you—give me that. Thank you.”</p><p>She put her phone charger next to the pen on her desk.</p><p>“You sure want to eat everything,” she said. “Does Spider May ever feed you? What do you eat?”</p><p>“Sensory input is—”</p><p>She sighed.</p><p>“Greater than processing capacity, I know,” she said. “I asked you what you eat, though.”</p><p>She got nothing.</p><p>She rolled her eyes. What else could he <em>possibly</em> be chewing on?</p><p>“Give me—” she froze.</p><p>Matt was gazing emptily out the window.</p><p>“Where am I?” he asked. He turned, searching for her with his face. “Where is this?”</p><p>He sounded so smooth. Like a real person. She edged forward in her chair.</p><p>“Matt?” she asked.</p><p>His face continued to seek her out.</p><p>“Who are you?” he asked.</p><p>“I’m Peni Parker,” she said. “Don’t you remember? You just said this?”</p><p>Matt’s brow furrowed. It almost never did that without him getting a scolding first. He lifted a hand and traced the line of the wire connecting him to her computer and then paused when he found the end of it in the tower.</p><p>“A processor?” he asked.</p><p>Well, technically?</p><p>“Where’s my processor?”</p><p>His what?</p><p>“Who are you?”</p><p>Wait, what was happening?</p><p>“Where am I?”</p><p>“I’m Peni,” Peni said. “I’ve been fixing you for the last three weeks. You don’t remember? I’ve been—I don’t understand. What’s happening to you?”</p><p>A silence settled between them.</p><p>Matt’s fingers wrapped around the wire.</p><p>“Do you want that out?” Peni asked him. “Is this confusing you?”</p><p>She got nothing.</p><p>“You’re Peni,” Matt said like he was dreaming.</p><p>“Yeah,” Peni said. “I’m Peni.”</p><p>“You’re real.”</p><p>“Why wouldn’t I be real?” she asked.</p><p>Matt blinked at nothing.</p><p>“You repaired the coolant lines. The fuel lines,” he said. “How did you—how did you know how to do that? You aren’t my mechanic.”</p><p>“How are you talking like this?” Peni asked him. She slipped out of her chair and knelt on the floor next to him.</p><p>She’d never heard of a robot speaking with a New York accent before. Never heard one speak such fluid English.</p><p>“I’m—you fixed me,” Matt said like he was shocked. “After Bullseye took the processor. You found me. And fixed me.”</p><p>“Who took the what?” Peni asked.</p><p>“I’m—I’m not what you’re thinking,” Matt said. “I’m not an android like you’re thinking.”</p><p>Uh….well, friend, all evidence is pointing to the contrary here.</p><p>“My name is Matt Murdock,” Matt said. “I’m—I’m one of the Empathy Project’s. I was human.”</p><p>Peni gasped softly.</p><p>“You were human?” she whispered.</p><p>Matt seemed to be getting sleepy.</p><p>“I was,” he said.</p><p>“Wait,” Peni said. “Don’t go to sleep. You’re okay. Did Spiderwoman do this to you? Did she make you?”</p><p>“This unit,” Matt said softly. “Not enough processing power. Can’t maintain consciousness.”</p><p>Sorry, what?</p><p>The desktop?</p><p>It didn’t have enough space?</p><p>“The processor,” Matt told her. He cupped his hand. “Small. Light. Teardrop shaped with a hook.” He touched two fingers to the side of his cheek.</p><p>It clicked.</p><p>“You have an external processor?” Peni asked.</p><p>Matt nodded languidly.</p><p>Oh, shit. No, that made complete sense. Her desktop couldn’t process a human <em>brain</em>.</p><p>“Where is it?” she asked. “I’ll find it for you.”</p><p>“Bullseye.”</p><p>Bullseye?</p><p>“Call Spiderwoman,” Matt said weakly. “Tell her Bullseye has—he took—he’s awake—”</p><p>The computer went haywire. Peni snapped her face up to it, then back down to see Matt go limp. She panicked and hurried to yank out the wire connecting the two. It was too late, though. The power in her room flickered twice and then went out with the connecting end in her hand.</p><p>Her whole spine went rigid and she lifted her head to the window.</p><p>It was dark outside.</p><p>But it was darker now with all the windows around the area having gone black.</p><p>Uh-oh.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Ben was <em>pissed</em>.</p><p>“You were hiding this—this <em>thing</em>?” he demanded, gesturing at Matt.</p><p>“He’s not a thing, he’s a person,” Peni said.</p><p>“He’s an android, Peni. Someone’s pet project. You can’t—”</p><p>“How do you know what he is?” Peni snapped.</p><p>Ben floundered. Peni pressed on.</p><p>“Why did it take me so long to figure out what he is?” she asked.</p><p>“Peni—”</p><p>“Is this more secrets?”</p><p>“No, it’s not like that—”</p><p>“It <em>sounds</em> like it’s like that,” she said. She bit her lip and looked down at Matt’s lifeless cheek.</p><p>“Nevermind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Some people I know are going to take him away anyways. He won’t be our problem anymore.”</p><p>Ben started to say something and then caught himself. Peni heard him sigh. She heard him move out from behind the kitchen, and she looked up as he wove his way over and crouched down next to Matt.</p><p>“He, uh, is a real sophisticated bot, isn’t he?” Ben said.</p><p>“Yeah,” Peni sighed. “He is.”</p><p>“Where did you find him?”</p><p>“On a roof. He was all beat up and leaking.”</p><p>“And you fixed him?”</p><p>That little ember of pride caught flame.</p><p>“Yeah,” she said. “I fixed him.”</p><p>Ben looked up at her and in the flashlight’s beam, she was surprised to see that he was smiling.</p><p>“That’s my girl,” he said. “Come on, let’s get him back in your room before someone comes by asking questions.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Peter B. was interested in Matt, but Miles and Gwen were very much weirded out by him. That might have been because Peni kept giving him little chunks of fuel cubes to chew on.</p><p>Ben said he couldn’t have much. They didn’t know how much energy he could store. But he figured that it wouldn’t hurt to give him a few little pieces since they hadn’t had much sun lately and Matt had no discernable charging ports.</p><p>Ben had given him half of a full bar to munch on, on his own the first time, and he’d lost his shit and had tried to climb out onto the balcony, so they’d decided as a team that that was <em>definitely</em> too much to give him.</p><p>Ben said that droids like Matt needed lots and lots of monitoring.</p><p>“They have zero impulse control,” Ben said. “Especially the ones with advanced learning programs. They observe human behavior and replicate it, which means that they can skateboard right away, but don’t have the sense not to skateboard off a cliff.”</p><p>That was enlightening. Peni hadn’t thought about learning programs.</p><p>She let Matt loose in the living room when he’d turned back on to see what he’d do, and sure enough, he immediately found a power strip that he tried to stick his fingers into, so you know.</p><p>Uncles were good for some things, it turned out.</p><p>“He’s fine,” Peni said to the others, handing off another nail-sized piece of fuel bar. “He’s just too advanced for his own good. He shorted out the whole block’s electricity the other day.”</p><p>Blondie’s eyebrows shot up.</p><p>“So you’re giving him treats?” Peter B. asked.</p><p>“He gets treats so he stops trying to chew on my highlighters,” Peni said.</p><p>Matt made sad android noises at Miles when Miles refused to eat the bit of fuel bar Matt put in his hand.</p><p>“May did say that he’s pretty much a danger to himself when he doesn’t have his processor thing,” Gwen said.</p><p>Matt latched onto her voice and took the fuel bite from Miles to offer it to her instead. She took it and pretended to eat it, and Peni had never seen such satisfaction on Matt’s face.</p><p>“He was talking about that processor thing, yeah. He said someone called Bullseye took it from him?” Peni said.</p><p>Matt came over to her for another bit of fuel bar to feed to Gwen. She gave him one of the outlet caps instead.</p><p>He held in this in silence for a minute, feeling over it.</p><p>“Yeah, girl. We fought that guy,” Gwen said. “He’s horrible. I hate him. I’m abolishing him.”</p><p>“Miles handled it,” Blondie said.</p><p>Miles made an exaggerated unhappy face. Blondie and B snickered at him.</p><p>“Okay, so are you taking him straight home, then?” Peni asked, referring to Matt who was now trying to sneak the outlet cap into her hoodie.</p><p>He was doing a bad job of it. He was nearly six feet tall and not at all sneaky.</p><p>“Uh, well. We were wondering if you wanted to do it,” Peter B. said.</p><p>Oh. Her?</p><p>Was that—like, a good idea?</p><p>“Well, you’re the one who fixed him,” Blondie said. “And he likes you best. Chances are he won’t go where you don’t lead him, so?”</p><p>Peni didn’t know why she was surprised. She’d just resigned herself to waving the fuel bar around Matt’s head and then cramming it into B’s hand to lead him away back to his universe.</p><p>She hadn’t thought that she would be the one doing that. Although now, she did kind of want to.</p><p>She looked up at Mr. Android.</p><p>“You want to go home?” she asked.</p><p>Matt whirred softly at her.</p><p>“Yeah, I thought you would,” she said. “Ready to go back to your Spiderwoman?”</p><p>Matt carried on whirring.</p><p>Peni frowned. He was usually faster at processing than this.</p><p>“Matt?” she asked again.</p><p>“Have located Spiderwoman,” Matt suddenly said. “Administrator, Peni Parker. Handler. Friend.”</p><p>Oh, <em>no</em>. No, no. No.</p><p>They weren’t doing that. Uh-uh.</p><p>“I’m not Spiderwoman,” Peni said. “I’m more like Sp//der. Your Spiderwoman—”</p><p>“Peni Parker,” Matt informed her helpfully.</p><p>“No,” Peni said. “No. May. <em>May</em>, remember? That’s your Spiderwoman.”</p><p>“Peni Parker.”</p><p>For god’s sake.</p><p>Gwen and Miles were laughing at her.</p><p>“I dunno, kiddo,” Peter B. said. “I think you might have just become Spiderwoman.”</p><p>How rude.</p><p>“I’m <em>Peni</em>,” she said. “Admin. Friend. Sp//der.”</p><p>Matt processed this for ages.</p><p>“Peni Parker,” he said. “Friend. Assist. Adding to Category: Foggy Nelson. Two hours of study, then music.”</p><p>O? Kay? Sure?</p><p>“I’ll take him,” she sighed. “None of you can handle him.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In daytime, Matt’s verse was pretty chill. Almost idyllic.</p><p>It made watching him get the life crushed out of him by a Spider-May very entertaining.</p><p>“You poor thing,” Spider May lamented, swaying back and forth with a superstrength she did not need, “You poor, poor thing. I was so worried. We were looking everywhere for you.”</p><p>Matt tried to escape. He could not. He made the saddest android sounds ever.</p><p>“Get back here. I’m not done with you. We’re having feelings, suck it up,”  Spider May said.</p><p>Her French braid had to be at least an arm long. Peni was jealous.</p><p>“Foggy’s been so worried,” Spider May carried on, petting at Matt’s hair dramatically. “And we found your processor, but I’m sorry. Bullseye’s really bullseye-ed it up.”</p><p>Matt hissed at her.</p><p>Like a cat. Peni almost shrieked with laughter.</p><p>“Don’t worry though, your tech friend at Columbia is making you another one. So you just have to be Android Matt for a little while—”</p><p>“Administrator status deleted—” Matt said.</p><p>“—longer. Oh? Gettin’ fresh now?”</p><p>“Administrator status awarded to: Benjamin Parker.”</p><p>“OH? My husband? You’re giving <em>Ben</em> my status?”</p><p>“Distress signal, submitted,” Matt said.</p><p>“The joke’s on you,” Spider May said. “He’s watching the game. Come on now. Say thank you to these lovely people.”</p><p>Aww. This was the part that Peni was dreading.</p><p>“Sorry, can we at least see him home?”</p><p>She looked up in surprise and saw Peter B. asking on her behalf. Spider May didn’t quite understand.</p><p>“It’s just important to Peni that he gets all the way home,” Peter B. said without consulting Peni at all. “You know. Would probably help her know that he’s with his family.”</p><p>His?</p><p>Family?</p><p>“Oh sure. Of course,” Spider May said. She smiled at Peni. “Foggy probably wants to thank you in person.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“You <em>fucking idiot</em>.”</p><p>Uh?</p><p>“This is normal,” Spidey May told the rest of them.</p><p>“Yeah, you better hiss, what did you eat? What do you have?”</p><p>Peni was mesmerized. This blonde guy was like, the definition of ‘Supervision.’ Matt dolefully handed him the outlet plug that Peni hadn’t realized he’d taken from her house.</p><p>‘Foggy’ looked at it, and then back at him with silent rage.</p><p>“I leave you alone for 24 hours, after you swear to me that you <em>aren’t</em> going out, and three weeks later, you come home to me with no processor, a piss-poor attitude, and <em>this</em>?”</p><p>Foggy shook the plastic pug at him. Matt patted at him tenderly.</p><p>“No,” Foggy said. “Bad bot. Time out.”</p><p>Matt made a devastated sound.</p><p>“I don’t care,” Foggy said. “You can play all the puppy whines you want. Time out for bots. Go on. Wait. Not yet. Did you thank this tiny human for putting up with you?”</p><p>Matt re-registered Peni on his radar and perked up. Peni saw him coming over to crowd her over into Foggy’s space from a mile away.</p><p>“Uh? Hi,” she said.</p><p>Foggy deflated and then grabbed at his face.</p><p>“I am so sorry,” he said. “So sorry for the inconvenience. He’s a nightmare on a good day and I am so grateful for you putting up with him and uh—uh? Making him? Quieter?”</p><p>“Those are the new fans,” she said.</p><p>Foggy’s forehead folded up in all kinds of ways.</p><p>“New fans,” he said. “Right. Because we didn’t have enough with the old—AH. Where do you think you’re going? Get back here.”</p><p>Amazing.</p><p>So this was what responsible android handling looked like.</p><p>“What? Oh, no. Not at all,” Foggy said, waving his hands. “Matt’s just—uh—he’s my partner. My best friend. We’ve known each other for, oh, seven? Eight years now? He lives with me and owns half our practice and like, legally, he’s my responsibility, but it’s more like when he’s Droid-Matt, he’s kind of prone to—oh, how shall we say—doing dumb shit. Like trying to drink coffee.”</p><p>“He doesn’t do that when he’s People-Matt, though?” Peni asked.</p><p>She got the flattest eyebrows in the world.</p><p>“No, he’s just as stupid, he’s just less cute,” Foggy deadpanned.</p><p>Peni liked him.</p><p>Peni liked him a lot.</p><p>“He’s safe with you, then,” she said. “I can say bye now.”</p><p>Foggy looked surprised and then that doubled when Matt made like a billion sad android sounds all layered over top of each other.</p><p>“That’s new,” Foggy said. “I guess he likes you. Doesn’t want you to leave.”</p><p>Peni felt like someone was inflating a balloon in her chest.</p><p>“It’s not for forever,” she mumbled. “I guess I can come back and visit. And, you know, help do repairs and stuff if he gets hurt again.”</p><p>Foggy seemed okay with his. Spider May hummed thoughtfully and said that Peni would have to teach her how to do the multiverse connection thing, but she said that she figured that Matt wouldn’t mind having her around, even after he was more like a person again.</p><p>It felt nice.</p><p>It felt like something Peni hadn’t felt before.</p><p>“Matty—HEY. For the love of—oh, nevermind,” Foggy said, as Matt disappeared past him through the door to their apartment and then reappeared with something in his hands.</p><p>“I thought you liked that, bud, are you sure you want to give that to her?” Foggy asked.</p><p>Peni was shocked at the little wooden ukulele Matt held out to her.</p><p>“Music,” he said. “Administrator. Friend. Peni Parker. Likes music.”</p><p>She…did.</p><p>“Play music,” Matt told her.</p><p>She wrapped her fingers around the ukulele. It was plain with a ring of red around its hollow. It was kind of old, and there were marks on it all over and little bleached out parts from it sitting in the sun for too long.</p><p>“I will,” she said, swallowing hard.</p><p>Foggy smiled at her. His eyes were kind of this light blue and super, super clear.</p><p>“Well, a friend of Matt’s is always welcome here,” he said. “Thank you for taking care of him. Let us know if you ever need anything.”</p><p>Matt nodded.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She went home. Her room felt empty. Her heart felt heavy.</p><p>She went and found two nails, though, and hammered them into the wall. She set the ukulele between them.</p><p>And then she felt better.</p><p>She slipped down onto her bed and kicked her feet over the side.</p><p>A lot better, actually.</p><p>Friends were…good. Friends were nice. She should try to be a better friend to Miles. And Gwen. And the Peters, even though there were too many to keep track of. And all these other people who maybe wanted to be friends.</p><p>Maybe she could be friends with them too, one day.</p><p>Baby steps.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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